Light on Disease

In his fast scientific stride Biologist William Firth Wells, industrious instructor of sanitary science at the Harvard School of Public Health, has made oyster eggs germinate artificially and by means of artificial sunlight made germs vanish from thin air. Last week after working persistently against smaller & smaller forms of life, Biologist Wells was able to announce that by means of ultraviolet light he destroys the minuscule cause of influenza as it floats in air.

Biologist Wells's Harvard experimental laboratory is a steel, glass-lined tank big as a dentist's operating room. Within is a mercury quartz lamp which emits ultraviolet light. The air within the tank Mr. Wells can make as pure or as germ-laden as he pleases.

By means of this big contraption he has proved many bacteriologic things which others have surmised--e. g., that germs actually float in air; that sunlight and artificial sunlight kill floating germs.

The lethal effect of ultraviolet light on whatever causes influenza proved exceedingly difficult to demonstrate. Bacteriologists do not know whether an ultramicroscopic germ causes that disease or whether an ultramicroscopic virus (which may be a living organism or an active chemical entity) is involved. Best means of cultivating that invisible something is in the body of a live ferret. Working with his wife, Dr. Mildred Washington Weeks Wells, and his laboratory associate, Dr. Harold W. Brown, Mr. Wells exposed ferrets to air which had been contaminated by influenza. If the germ-laden air had been exposed to ultraviolet light in the big air tank, no ferret caught influenza. If not, all did, thus demonstrating the purifying effects of ultraviolet light on airborne diseases.

On the assumption that ultraviolet light did have this lethal effect a number of U. S. hospitals irradiate the air of their operating rooms with artificial sunlamps. Last week it seemed reasonable to assume that modern theatres, auditoriums, stores and offices which filter and condition their air may also irradiate it with ultraviolet light.

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